Granddaddy of a mistake brands him a terrorist
LONDON— He could have misspelled his address, or entered an incorrect age — something fairly harmless.
But no, the error John Stevenson made in an online form for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was clicking on the wrong answer to a question …
The question that asked whether he was a terrorist.
Stevenson, a Scottish grandfather, said he made an honest mistake, but it might ruin his plans to fly with his wife to New York City on Monday.
He ran into trouble filling out the automated online form on the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, known as ESTA, that allows people from selected countries to apply for travel to the United States without a visa.
“One of the questions asks if you are a terrorist and it must have jumped from ‘no’ to ‘yes’ without me knowing,” Stevenson was quoted as saying on the news site the Independent.
When he noticed the error, he said, he called U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “They looked up my ESTA number and said, ‘You’re a terrorist.’
“I told them I was 70 years old and I don’t even recognize what that means,” he said.
He was not the first to have trouble with ESTA, but the system seems blind to mitigating circumstances.
Last year, a baby whose grandfather made a similar mistake as Stevenson was told to apply for a visa.
This summer, Javier Solana, a former secretary general of NATO, had his application refused because he had travelled to Iran in 2013.
Some version of the phrase “Do you seek to engage in or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities, espionage, sabotage, or genocide?” is among the eligibility questions on the form, though it is not clear why any terrorist, spy, saboteur or mass murderer would answer “yes.”
Doing so, whether by mistake or not, does not mean the person will be banned from the United States, but it doesn’t help.
It usually means having to go through the lengthier and more expensive process of applying for a visa.
For the family of the baby, whose grandfather, Paul Kenyon, made the mistake, the trip cost an extra £3,000 (about $5,000 Canadian), including new flights, The Guardian reported.
An unsuccessful ESTA application may mean people can no longer apply for a visa waiver. But they can still apply for a visa.